hold on
by Constance Greene
Summary: Make a wish and make it last forever. — DemyxKairi


- - -

For _rokukami_'s contest.

Firstly, this is a little different from how I normally write my fics. I apologize for any confusion ahead of time, and any, 'Wtf Constance, this isn't your writing!' outbursts from my stalkers. ( Um, what stalkers? ) It's intentional.

The writing style, anyway, is inspired by _Fight Club_ ( the book, not the movie. ..obviously ).

It's DemyxKairi & AU(ish). Enjoy. ♥

**Disclaimer**: Not mine.

**h o ld **_o**n**_ ;;

- - -

My boss is sitting twelve desks away from me. I know there are twelve desks because I've counted them three times before. All of these twelve desks are empty.

I only half notice he's staring. I divide my head like mitosis to glance out the window.

Oh, look. A car. It's red.

What a waste.

I do this every day. Wake up at 6:15 AM. Weave in and out of an obstacle course of trash in my two-man apartment, which really holds eight. "The landlady lies," Axel explained to me when the sixth addition to our group, Xigbar, walked through the door. "She just wants to sleep with my girlfriend."

Pictures of Larxene and Mrs. Landlady, with her short oily black hair and cigarettes. Ow. Hands clutching my head. Ow.

I try to go to the only bathroom and find that it's locked. Roxas is in there.

"I'll be out in a minute!"

Five minutes later.

"A _minute_, Demyx! Learn to count!"

We should go back to elementary school days.

What happened to just us as roommates, Axel?

Well, these people are our friends, Demyx, he says. And they don't got homes. So we let them in.

What a Good Samaritan you are, Axel.

I really want Luxord's cards in my peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

And Xigbar's pickles.

Thanks.

I arrive at work at 7 AM. I take the bus. When I walk into the office, my boss always says, You're late.

You're late, Demyx.

I sit down without a word. In the beginning I used to apologize profusely. Now it's just understood that I'm mentally screaming my apologies.

Sorry, sorry, sorry. No; I'm not.

After a half hour, I take out my pencil. It's a Ticonderoga. I tap it on the shiny Formica desk and start to stare off into space.

Start to zone out.

Oh, yeah.

I'm lucky that my office has a window. If it didn't, I'd never be entertained.

Albeit it's a small window, and so utterly geometric, you can still look out of it and see the city streets and some buildings, decapitated around four stories high.

Today is a sunny day, but the smog's rolling in.

Gazing out the window, I begin to make up lyrics in my head.

_Outside it may be sunny,  
__But it's raining inside.  
__My insides are flooded,  
__They're on overdrive. _

I'm distracted by my boss. I look up with wide, spaced-out eyes and see that he's standing right next to me at my elbow. He's positively looming in his suit and tie, purple with little unicorns on it.

No. Not unicorns. Daisies.

I giggle despite myself. The urge bubbles up in my throat and I have to let it out, like a belch. To my boss, it seems as though I've done just that.

Go home, he tells me. You look sick. And I am sick. I have dark circles under my eyes, like bruises and not unlike Axel's eyeliner when it gets smeared. I haven't been sleeping. And it's because of home. Home. Where was home, a small upstairs apartment infested with vermin as big as cows. Vermin that are my friends. My friends that throw huge, crazy parties like the ones back in college and fraternities, filled with Ecstasy and all-night delight.

My friends.

You are floaters.

You are previously renowned white trash.

You are assholes.

You are people – not even people – that fill up what little space we have in the world with your nonexistent morals and offensive behaviors.

Every night so I can't sleep.

So many large bodies cramped in such a compact space.

It's not right. It's not right.

And when they yell for me to be their guitarist, I say, sitar. It's a sitar.

And slam the door shut.

- - -

I am relieved that he lets me leave early. Of course I'm not going home; not yet. I have my sitar down in the lobby, and I pick it up, and it walks me outside. Like a dog.

I'm blasted by the sunshine and the cumulus clouds. Everything is as it should be, and yet it feels so wrong.

The street is full of honking horns and raised middle fingers. I walk with my head down, my sitar in its sleek black case at an angle, trying not to look at anything but my feet and the gum-littered pavement beneath them.

At the corner of a building, the beginning of an alley and the edge of the slightly more lulled intersection, I take a seat. My back slides against the bricks dully but doesn't scrape. Satisfied, I begin to pick mildly at the sitar. A smooth blue thing, etched with electric yellow. I love it; it is my life. It's so much better than my friends, my apartment, my job. It was my most treasured possession. Not the stacks of magazines and old newspapers in the kitchen. Not my plain black slacks that I wore to work every day. Not my job's department: Returns and Deliveries. Ha. Ha. Ha. How do those two even go together.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see a girl skipping in my direction. No, not skipping; it was only an illusion. But she isn't. She's petite and lean and could be dancing towards me, with her skinny white arms stretched behind her back and narrow hips swaying to some invisible music. Oh right. I'm playing it.

Sometimes I grow so used to the music that it's in my head. I use it to block out the booming base of my friends' bands, but it's still disconcerting.

She stops and listens quietly before me. I go on acting as if she's not there, secretly excited that I now have an audience.

When I dwindle down to a more subtle part of the song, she says something.

"Pretty."

Pretty.

My music has never been called 'pretty' before. It's always been, shit. And butt wipes. And mentally retarded.

"I'm not much a sight to look at, Miss." As if I really misinterpreted her. Maybe I did. No sleep.

"Not you; the song." She nervously reacted, and I waited for her to giggle and look sideways at one of her girlfriends, but no one's there. The Queen does not have her subjects trailing at her skirts today. She is alone. Alone and radiant.

I go on playing idly, but a question loosens my tongue. Where do you live? I blurt out. Way to go, Demyx. Not stalker-like at all.

But she's unfazed. She points off a ways behind me. "Over there. Just around that block."

"Cool.

"Maybe I'll see you sometime." And I try to grin.

Something comes out differently. There must be too much static, I think. The traffic's fuzzing up our brains _and _our hearing. Because she says, Maybe. She says maybe. And it's a light-hearted statement, and it's a maybe.

I don't expect her to keep her promise. I'm used to people letting me down.

- - -

She's back.

Oh, euphoria.

She comes back every day.

Every day after work.

She has red hair.

Her name is Kairi.

She has red hair and her name is Kairi.

Every day I fake sickness at work. So much that my boss goes, "Why did you even bother coming here?" I shrug and cough. Roll my eyes behind his back. And go downstairs and to the street.

So I always get off early.

Early release, baby.

She still always stands quietly like a porcelain doll and listens to me sing. Listens to me play.

Just her patient, appreciative presence is music to my ears.

One day, she told me her name.

Okay, so I asked her first.

What's your name? I said, and she said,

Kairi.

Well, my name's Demyx.

I guess then we became friends.

When you have had friends all your life that aren't really your friends, to call your new actual friend a friend is sort of depressing. But that's what she is; a friend. Not a douche-bag friend that hangs around your apartment (or, lives) and treats you like the dirt caking the floors and the walls. But a friend. A friend is a friend is a friend.

Vision this: You run around your kitchen all day before work, trying to figure out what to do.

Axel, you yell, we need to clean.

We don't need to clean no stinkin' shit, someone says. Maybe it's Larxene or Roxas or Xigbar or Luxord or even Axel.

We really need to clean the kitchen.

I can't eat in it.

Heck, I can hardly _breathe _in it.

And you come across Marluxia sunbathing in the living room's fluorescent light. Nude.

These are not your friends.

Another day Kairi asked me to go to a concert with her.

"Do you like this band?" It's my favourite band. Of course I'll come with her. Did I have a choice?

"No, I'll make you come." She says and smiles.

If we go, my crazy friends might come. They might come and try to ruin everything, even when there are a bah-zillion people around them, they'll ruin everything. Above all else, I was shamed to expose Kairi to my friends.

They won't come.

They _wouldn't_ come.

They still have their parties to make.

- - -

You aren't going to the concert, I say.

"Yes we are, Demyx." Axel watches my growing expression of horror ( mouth open, eyes wide ) with steady green eyes. The eyes of a cat. The eyes of the devil. And he looks like the devil – when you have bright red hair the hue of Satan's skin in the shape of flames, and devious little upside-down tear-mark tattoos beneath your eyes, you better believe you look like the devil with sharp features and pale skin and a pointed nose.

You can't.

"We already bought the tickets."

You just can't.

You'll ruin _everything_.

I want to throw my hands up and yell at him. I'm too exasperated and crestfallen to do so.

"I am _not_ going to waste those three hundred dollars."

All of you.

"Yes."

Where did he get the money? I asked. Just what the heck did he think he was doing? That was our _rent_ money. That was more than I earned in a _month. _

"Too bad." He acted as though he were going to cry. Then, I realized he was only mocking me.

I can't live with you people anymore. There's no more hope. I'm hopeless. You're hopeless.

I walk out of the living room, my battle abandoned. This is me, giving up.

And slam the door shut.

- - -

You go to the concert anyway.

Kairi's there.

Of course you haven't warned her. When did you have the time, or the courage?

Coward. Coward.

And now she's surrounded by your friends. Your friends; the last people you want her to meet.

Countdown until internal combustion. In five. Four. Three.

One of them spots you. It's Zexion. He motions to the rest of them, and for a moment they stop swarming around Kairi like sharks or hornets or vultures and turn to you.

"Oh. Look what the dog dragged in."

There's Larxene, sneering and clinging onto Axel's bony arm like a leech. Her mouth is like a leech because it's so elongated. I imagine sharp rows of teeth, a bazillion of them, lining the inside of the fleshy opening. Rows and rows of points that will sting and latch onto its enemy until it drains all the blood from their bodies. Too bad leeches didn't have antennae, like her hair.

_"Too bad." _

Two.

"We were just talking to Vagina here."

One.

Kairi looks at me hopefully and hopelessly.

I was about to say, Don't call her that, you dirty rotten bastard. But I don't think they'd listen.

Although I stood there, I was still noticeably growing angry. I could feel my palms beginning to sweat. Kairi lowered her mellow eyes and mumbled, "It's okay." Then I reached for her hand and led her out of there.

We made it through the crowd without them following us and found our seats. While we were walking I said shortly, I'm sorry.

"It's okay," She said again.

They're bastards.

She makes a small noncommittal sound, though it could have been out of agreement.

My eyes gaze out, dead and emotionless, at the band that begins to play. The music is loud, but not as loud as it is in my apartment. It keeps my anger going. Beating around my eardrums, I can't escape the frustration my friends gave me. They've gone too far and messed with Kairi. I can't explain it. I felt almost protective over her.

I was pissed.

Sitting beside me, she seems to notice my tension and overall discomfort. She makes it as if she'll take my hand . . . and then hesitates.

I glance at her.

What, I not quite ask. You have to have some kind of tone in your voice in order to ask a question.

"Is something wrong?"

I took in a breath. Drew it out. _Sigh._ "No . . ."

"The music's nice." A smile plays at the corner of her lips.

"Mmm." Distracted. Oh, so distracted.

Suddenly I'm besieged and poked in the ribs. "Tell me," She pries, her words cooing.

"It's nothing!" Exasperated, and I toss my hands up. It blends into the crowd around us, because they're all waving their hands to the music.

"Is it your friends?

"Don't worry about them. Just forget about them."

Her words are astoundingly reassuring.

All right.

This means I'll have to get out of this place. I can't stay cooped up for long.

Without Kairi seeming to mind, I get up near the middle of the concert and we both walk out of the building. The fresh night air hits us like a car crash, and her hair blows back in the wind. I tug at it.

"Nice."

She takes a lock and swipes it behind the delicate cup of her ear. "I'm growing it out." Ah yes. Now I remember, it used to be shorter . . .

- - -

Somehow, we end up on the roof. Don't ask, it takes a lot of acrobatics on my part and a nasty puncture wound when the iron ladder's rusted, sharp edge impaled the side of my arm while climbing.

"Oh jeeze, I'm going to get rabies."

"That's tetanus, you goof."

After being inspected, looked over, and treated by Kairi to make sure I won't bleed out of my life source in the next fifteen minutes or die instantaneously from parasites that made their way to my brain, we continue our journey and reach the top.

Wow.

"It's beautiful up here," Admits Kairi as she stands near the edge, looking out at the city. The last dying rays from the set sun are a smudge of colour against the backdrop of grey-blue sky. It's only one story high (and a half), but we feel sort of like we're on top of the world.

We lie down on our backs and look up at the murky darkening sky. Instead of finding shapes in the clouds we begin to count the stars that are tentatively peeking into existence. I find the prettiest one with a violetish tint and point. "Look, that one's yours."

Oh, a shooting star.

Close your eyes.

Make a wish.

Mine is to lose the control my friends have over me and to stay with Kairi.

We're side-by-side. It begins to drizzle. Tiny raindrops patter down on us, speckling our bodies, dampening our clothes. Like crystals, they dot our skin and slide off once the water collects.

Then it begins to rain.

The raindrops get heavier and more persistent. Come on, they urge. We must soak all of God's creation. It's in His power to do so.

With her hair splaying out around her head like a blazing halo on the rooftop, Kairi speaks immediately.

"It's raining."

And then, for some reason unknown to me, she stands up.

Kairi, no.

Inevitably, she loses her footing. The shingles, which are flaking and triggered by the rain, break – from beneath her feet they're sliding. She's sliding.

I rush towards her, diving to catch her hand just in time and hitting down hard on my stomach as I do so. She swings over the side of the roof, legs kicking freely in the air, eighteen feet off the ground. Her skin is layered with slick moisture, and so is mine – I can't keep my grip for long.

"Just hold on, Kairi. If you can, hold on," I yell.

She sweeps her great lavender blue eyes up at me in a panic. "I'm – slipping –"

I tighten my grip. Squeeze.

"You've got to have faith in me, Kairi."

Make a wish.

Oh God, please don't let her fall.

I won't let you fall.

I can't just have nothing.

I can't just keep on throwing things away.

Please.

Summoning up all my strength, I wrench her back over the top. She's crying – I wouldn't know because the tears that fall from her eyes are like the rain already on her cheeks, but she's making sobbing noises from fear and relief.

We slowly rise to our feet, knees first in a crouch. Instantly she flies into me, arms encircling just above my waist in a tight embrace. The side of her face pressed against my mid-chest. We both shudder as one, trying to keep balance. We don't want to fall again.

My friends could keep on throwing their lives away, but I wouldn't. Mine finally had meaning. All my life it had been false promises; but this was one to keep.

Kairi with her arms wrapped around me and raindrops dripping down on our shoulders.

She closes her eyes.

Make a wish.

Make this last forever.

Me with Kairi's arms wrapped around me and raindrops dripping down on our shoulders and our hearts beating as one, together.

This is how it is.

This it how it always will be.

- - -

Hum... I don't know. I think I failed. Review if you please ( early birthday present for Connie? ) ♥;;


End file.
